In this regard, electric cars are worse even than 'normal' cars. They're too quiet. If recently one of the car brands did not introduce a (very too quiet) beep on one of their EVs when reversing, I would have been ran over in a parking lot. And my hearing is more than fine (to the point that I have to disconnect electronics when sleeping because I hear them).
EVs are not completely silent, but often times the sounds of the environment are louder, thus making EVs harder to notice through hearing.
Right? I don't know why they couldn't have just (or also) put an electric drivetrain in a regular Mustang. My two theories are (a) somebody at Ford really hates cars that aren't SUV/crossovers[0], or (b) the Mach E is an attempt to appeal to the aging demographic of people who wanted Mustangs as kids in the 60s/70s. Ford's marketing definitely seems to promote the Mach E for older people.[1]
Can you upgrade parts of an electric vehicle to improve performance? Can you "tune" an electric vehicle? I honestly don't know; I don't own one and was never into tuning my vehicles for performance.
I think that hobby is more what draws folks than the raw performance.
Or, like my wonderful neighbor, want to remove their muffler to show off how awesome they are.
More seriously, a successful electric car needs a chassis that's been engineered to be an electric car. You can convert a normal front engine, rwd chassis, but it's always a compromise.
Surely that goal is far easier to meet with electric cars, not less? As many electric manufacturers have already demonstrated, it's relatively straightforward to fit a 500-1000 breakhorsepower EV motor into pretty much any chassis you want. Just add two if you want to realy go nuts. An EV Challenger that slaps a Hellcat in literally every category other than sound and how fast it drinks fuel should satisfy those needs no?
But as we've seen with Tesla, Rivian and others, electric is no barrier to horsepower. Horsepower is a barrier to range, but that's a different problem.
No, the reason there's no market for an electric Challenger et al is because the electric one doesn't sound right.
Around here, it seems pretty much every other pony car (Challenger, Mustang, Camaro) has reworked the exhaust system to "sound better", so it can be enjoyed by everyone else within a mile as they do their full throttle runs down empty street at night.
It should also be noted that Cadillac has already (year or so ago?) stated they won't be making any more ICE performance cars. All of their future ones will be electric. I doubt this is GM wide, pretty sure the ICE Corvette is filed in GMs "cold, dead hands" drawer.
They did the same thing that Jaguar did, when they went from the late-70s underpinnings of the X308 XJ to the all-new X350 XJ in 2003. The style cues...the first things that meet the eye; the curve of the rear fender and the shape of the headlights-those things were kept-but the proportions of the car are different. The new one was taller and narrower, with a proportionally smaller greenhouse. It takes a while to see it; but it's a dramatic difference when you do.
The Charger/Challenger were the same way. Th '70s originals were built on the old Dodge Coronet platform-low and wide. The new (current) ones, built on the Chrysler LX platform shared much of their hidden sheetmetal with the Mercedes W210/W211 E-class; so instead of low and wide, they're tall and narrow, more like a German luxury sedan. Without, you know, the good visibility.
It may still have been tricky to get regulatory approval, though. I can’t share my sources or specifics, but I do know stories of strings being pulled and crash tests being fudged in order to get a muscle car’s new model cleared to sell.
Safety standards are getting strict enough that they do influence the physical shape of the car, because the physical shape of the car influences your options for how to dissipate energy in a collision.
Certainly, if you look at them side by side, the new Challenger is noticeably "thicker", for whatever reason, no doubt mostly regulatory since we know how much manufacturers enjoy adding weight, especially to performance cars. But at a casual glance, it still looks more like a Challenger than not.
They'd probably have real problems with a Barracuda.
Said another way, I don't understand why going electric precludes muscle cars.
If anything, it seems like they have an opportunity to make them even faster when they are electrified.